The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Monday said that South African Revenue Service (Sars) Commissioner, Tom Moyane, may have potentially misled the country when he claimed that the revenue service reached its revised target of R1.14-trillion for the 2016/17 fiscal year.

Sars announced on Monday a R1.144-trillion preliminary outcome for revenue collection for the 20176/17 tax year, at least R300 000 above the revised estimate as announced in the 2017 Budget.

This means that Sars broke the trillion rand mark for the second year in a row. However, this figure was R30-billion from the first revised tax target.

DA spokesperson on finance, Alf Lees, said Moyane claimed he would deal with “the elephant in the room”, but then did exactly the opposite, and did not disclose the amount owing in VAT refunds as of 31 March 2017.

Moyane reported that VAT refunds for the year totalled R181.4-billion, exceeding estimate by R1.2-billion, and reflecting an increase of R14.4-billion.

Lees said Moyane simply cannot claim to have reached the revised target if there were significant amounts outstanding in VAT refunds, which amounted to R19.6-billion as of 28 February 2017.

“I will, therefore, write to the Sars commissioner, Tom Moyane, requesting him to disclose the total amount of VAT refunds outstanding as of 31 March 2017,” Lees said.

“We cannot have a situation where the SARS potentially misleads the public about its performance in terms of revenue collection into the 2016/17 fiscal year.”